Cha-Tea Circle: A Podcast Series on Asian American Spiritualities Chanhee Heo, Elaine Lai, Chenxing Han, and Xianfeng Shi

In this episode, Cha-Tea Circle hosts Chenxing Han, Chanhee Heo, Elaine Lai, and Xianfeng Shi introduce the podcast series we developed, and the seven different episodes we feature.
We draw out larger themes from our podcast series including: finding a sense of home through community building, reckoning with Asian American identity, artistic practice as spirituality, and empathetic pedagogical approaches in higher education.
Meet us here.

Chanhee interviews Helena Choi Soholm, a Korean American shaman and healer who channels Korean Indigenous traditions into therapy practice for intergenerational and cultural trauma. Helena shares her insights on the roles of the contemporary shaman healer, Indigenous technology and knowledge, her immigration experience, and the relationship of immigrants to this Indigenous land.

Chanhee interviews Julian Saporiti, a musician-historian whose celebrated No-No Boy project creates folk songs as a way of telling Asian American history. Julian takes us on a wide-ranging journey, covering his relationship to Buddhism and activism, his subversive style and storytelling approach through music, and the challenges and connections he feels with the term “Asian American."

Elaine interviews Abbas Rattani, the founder of MIPSTERZ—an arts and culture collective that curates, incubates, and amplifies Muslim and marginalized ally creative voices. Hear about Abbas’ own spiritual journey to finding like-minded Muslim artists/creatives and how MIPSTERZ came into being, as well as recent projects on Muslim Futurism, and why it is that we all need to be a part of a Muslim future.

Elaine interviews scholar-artist Reyhab Mohmed Patel on her project Khawab (kha-wa-b) meaning “to dream '' in Urdu, featured on the MIPSTERZ platform. Khawab is a multi-faceted storytelling portrait series that fictionalizes the alter-egos of Muslim women in Toronto. Topics covered include the process of creating Khawab, how Islamophobia manifests differently in Canada and the U.S., the importance of integrating academia and the arts, and celebrating Muslim joy.

Elaine interviews L.A. native Rev. David Woo who is the founder of Burning Pride, a Buddhist recovery fellowship for Asian Americans. David shares about his own journey to addiction recovery and how Buddhism and mindfulness helped him in this process. Other topics covered include the need for much more nuanced representations of Asian Americans in film, David’s moving documentary film Get Jumped In, and a lifelong search for home.